One of the great German writers of the 20th century draws from his own life to present a “brave, fearless, and honest” tale of one man’s dark descent into depression and alcoholism (The Sunday Times, London)This astonishing, autobiographical tour de force was written by Hans Fallada in an encrypted notebook while he was incarcerated in a Nazi insane asylum. Discovered after his death, it tells the tale—often fierce, often poignant, often extremely funny—of...

'...I stare at the coffee I poured myself, and I think: caffeine is a poison that stimulates the heart. There are plenty of instances of people killing themselves with coffee, hundreds and thousands of them. Caffeine is a deadly poison, maybe almost as deadly as morphine. Why didn't it ever occur to me before: coffee is my friend!'Drawing on Hans Fallada's own history of addiction, these two stories and are written with a remarkable, tough, spartan clarity. As a ma...

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Iron Gustav: A Berlin Family Chronicle transforms the true story of Berlin cabman Gustav Hartmann into a panoramic domestic epic of Germany between empire and dictatorship. Through the Hackendahl family—stubborn patriarch, embattled wife, and children scattered by war, inflation, crime, and political extremism—Fallada examines how public catastrophe enters the kitchen, workshop, and conscience. Its prose is plain, swift, and observant, allied to Neue Sachlichkeit yet warmed by Dickensian s...

Little Man, What Now? is a quietly devastating novel of the late Weimar Republic, following the young clerk Johannes Pinneberg and his resilient wife, Emma "Lämmchen," as unemployment, debt, and bureaucratic humiliation narrow the possibilities of ordinary life. Written in a lucid, compassionate mode associated with Neue Sachlichkeit, Fallada blends social observation with intimate domestic realism, turning a modest marriage into an indictment of economic collapse and the fragile promises ...

**THE ACCLAIMED INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER'One of the most extraordinary and compelling novels written about World War II. Ever' Alan FurstInspired by a true story, Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin is a gripping wartime thriller following one ordinary man's determination to defy the tyranny of Nazi rule**Berlin, 1940, and the city is filled with fear. At the house on 55 Jablonski Strasse, its various occupants try to live under Nazi rule in their different ways...

The return of a “superb” forgotten masterpiece about a young couple living in Weimar Germany during the Nazi’s rise to power (Graham Greene)Written just before the Nazis came to power, this darkly enchanting novel tells the simple story of a young couple trying to eke out a devent life amidst an economic crisis that’s transforming their country into a place of anger and despair. It was an international bestseller upon its release, and made into a Hollywood movie—by...

“I lived the same life as everyone else, the life of ordinary people, the masses.” Sitting in a prison cell in the autumn of 1944, the German author Hans Fallada sums up his life under the National Socialist dictatorship, the time of “inward emigration”. Under conditions of close confinement, in constant fear of discovery, he writes himself free from the nightmare of the Nazi years. He records his thoughts about spying and denunciation, about the threat to his livelihood and his literary w...

Hailed as “Fallada’s best book” (The New Yorker), this sprawling post-WWI is a portrait of Berlin in a time of great upheaval—and of the common man’s struggle to survive it allSet in Weimar Germany soon after Germany’s catastrophic loss of World War I, the story follows a young gambler who loses everything in Berlin, then flees the chaotic city, where worthless money and shortages are causing pandemonium. Once in the countryside, however, he finds a defeat...

'It was what we call in the trade a potato...'Tales of low-lifes and grifters trying to make ends meet in pre-War Germany.Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and i...

It was the turning point before he became a bestselling author: Hans Fallada handed himself in to the police in September 1925, following repeated cases of embezzlement to finance his alcohol and morphine addiction.At the time, a court-appointed doctor was assigned to assess the extent to which Fallada could be made accountable. This expert opinion, thought to have been lost, was only recently rediscovered. It is an extraordinary find, because it includes unpublished and rewritten ...

Available for the first time in English, here is an unforgettable novel about the desolation of Hitler’s postwar Germany.The war is over, yet Dr. Doll, a loner and “moderate pessimist,” lives in constant fear. By night, he is still haunted by nightmarish images of the bombsite in which he is trapped—he, and the rest of Germany. More than anything, he wishes to vanquish the demon of collective guilt, but he is unable to right any wrongs, especially in his position as mayor of a smal...